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CRIME

Unusual suspect arrested in Naples bank robbery

After €500 went missing in a Naples bank, police turned to CCTV and uncovered an unlikely thief.

Published: 22 August 2013 12:23 CEST
Unusual suspect arrested in Naples bank robbery
The customer had €500 taken from his wallet. Photo: Standalone/Flickr

An investigation was launched after a 53-year-old customer left his wallet in a locker at the entrance of the bank, only to find €500 missing when he returned a few hours later.

CCTV footage from the bank revealed that the thief was in fact the bank’s own security guard, employed to protect customers from thievery, Il Messaggero reported on Thursday.

The guard used the key from another locker to get to the wallet; he then sifted through it before stealing the money and putting the wallet back.

The thief has now been arrested and charged with aggravated theft, while he has also been stripped of his gun license, the newspaper said. 

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CRIME

Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

Italy is conducting more investigations into alleged fraud of funds from the EU post-Covid fund and has higher estimated losses than any other country, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said.

Published: 8 April 2024 17:05 CEST
Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

The EPPO reportedly placed Italy under special surveillance measures following findings that 179 out of a total of 206 investigations into alleged fraud of funds through the NextGenerationEU programme were in Italy, news agency Ansa reported.

Overall, Italy also had the highest amount of estimated damage to the EU budget related to active investigations into alleged fraud and financial wrongdoing of all types, the EPPO said in its annual report published on Friday.

The findings were published after a major international police investigation into fraud of EU recovery funds on Thursday, in which police seized 600 million euros’ worth of assets, including luxury villas and supercars, in northern Italy.

The European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, established to help countries bounce back from the economic blow dealt by the Covid pandemic, is worth more than 800 billion euros, financed in large part through common EU borrowing.

READ ALSO: ‘It would be a disaster’: Is Italy at risk of losing EU recovery funds?

Italy has been the largest beneficiary, awarded 194.4 billion euros through a combination of grants and loans – but there have long been warnings from law enforcement that Covid recovery funding would be targeted by organised crime groups.

2023 was reportedly the first year in which EU financial bodies had conducted audits into the use of funds under the NextGenerationEU program, of which the Recovery Fund is part.

The EPPO said that there were a total of 618 active investigations into alleged fraud cases in Italy at the end of 2023, worth 7.38 billion euros, including 5.22 billion euros from VAT fraud alone.

At the end of 2023, the EPPO had a total of 1,927 investigations open, with an overall estimated damage to the EU budget of 19.2 billion euros.

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